My thoughts on education and life in general

Fire Alarm

Apr 4, 2009

In case of fire, I just might die. Seriously.

I was cleaning the kitchen this evening when I heard the alarm. I spent a good 5 minutes trying to figure out if it was real or not. I tried to feel if it was getting hotter, I looked at the peephole to see if people were panicking outside. I don’t even understand what they were saying, of course it was in French. Only after I heard two people go down did I grab my jacket and keys and head towards the elevator.

When I got out of my apartment, I was surprised with the smoke. Oh my, the alarm was real. And I left my valuables inside the apartment. So much for grabbing the most important thing in case of a fire. Geez, I never believed there was a fire when I got out of my room in the first place.

When I got down, two people told me that it was a false alarm. I was stupefied for a couple of seconds since they said those words in French. The girl figured out that I couldn’t understand, and asked me if I can understand English. Ah, finally the story was told. My neighbor was cooking and he burnt the food. To let the smoke out of his unit, he opened the door. Bam, fire alarm triggered. He apologized as we returned to our own units.

No wonder the smell was weird. Burnt food. I should have known that when I passed by his door as I was going down.

Lessons learned:

Grab the entire bag, not just the keys inside the bag.

Don’t wait for people to start panicking before going out of the apartment.

Learn French. Or at least, the French word for ‘fire’.

In case of smoke (caused by burnt food or something), open the window. Not the door.

This incident got me thinking, what is the most important thing I have at the moment? What is the one thing that I will grab in case of a fire?